The Book of Daniel II

I watched “The Book of Daniel” Friday night, and I can’t see what the fuss is about. I could fault the writers for having so much trouble descend on one family in the course of a two-hour introductory, but I can think of times when I felt like there was that much happening to my family.

Daniel is a well-meaning, earnest man who wants to do right by his congregation and his family, not in that order. There are a lot of pressures on him, just as there are pressures on all of us. Like many people I’ve known—especially priests—he talks to God about them. When a good friend of mine, a priest named Whit, spoke to a God he could not see or hear, he called it “prayer,” and no one had a problem with it. Why anyone has a problem with an audiovisual representation of Jesus hearing the prayer is beyond me. And Jesus shows up when Daniel reaches for the Vicodin, sometimes keeping him from using it. Is there a problem here?

I’ve known a lot of people who claimed that God spoke to them. I always wanted to ask what language he used and exactly what he said. It usually seemed that he was telling them to do something that I couldn’t support. Jesus, on “The Book of Daniel,” isn’t like that at all. He asks questions, he expresses love, and he sometimes jokes. In other words, this Jesus isn’t one who shows up only to help or judge; this is the embodiment of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” This is an omnipresent but not particularly intrusive savior. Is there a problem with that?

I glanced at the show’s message boards, and there are some very angry people there. Maybe everyone just needs to take a deep breath, count to ten, and watch a couple of episodes. It certainly doesn’t hurt anyone when television, through shows like this one, “Joan of Arcadia,” and “Touched by an Angel,” can prompt discussion of spiritual things.